Kursverdoppelung bei Actua Corporation (vorm. Internet Capital)

würde vermutlich Freeborders schon heute bringen. Aber das ist auf längere Sicht noch sehr viel mehr drin.

Internet Capital hält 32% an Freeborders.

Biggest IT-outsourcing-story of the world = Freeborders      4-Apr-08 04:49 pm     Freeborders Sells PLM Division to Lawson
Lawson Software (LWSN) has announced that it has acquired the Product Livecycle Management (PLM) software division from FreeBorders. This move apparently will allow Freeborders to focus on it’s outsourcing business as a pure play operation. Terms of the deal were not announced.

This seems like a no-brainer for Freeborders. Running a software product company is a completely different discipline from successfully building an outsourcing company. Beyond the distraction of trying to keep both moving forward, you’ll face the inevitable questions about conflicts of interest, including:

“Do customers of your software product get preferential treatment from the outsourcing group?”
“If there is a resource squeeze, which side of the business gets a break?”
“Are you really serious about outsourcing, or is this just a service component to your product offering.”
From the time that I first met Freeborders, I thought that their product business was a possible weak link in their story. This move clearly shows that Freeborders is serious about their outsourcing business and that their new management is making changes to the company that will allow them to compete even more effectively. We should all keep a close watch on this organization.

Technorati Tags: China, China Outsourcing

POSTED BY deans ON 03.17.08 @ 08:12 |

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Having the proper tools can carry through to the bottom line. A corporation that doesn't know how much it spends with each of its vendors can miss opportunities to leverage purchasing power for discounts. Similarly, lack of oversight on hotel contract negotiations can result in huge meeting-cancellation fees that companies could avoid by negotiating flexible terms.

Spending on U.S. corporate meetings is expected to grow to $75.8 billion this year from $73.4 billion in 2005, according to a study released last year by PhoCusWright, a corporate-travel research firm based in Sherman, Conn. Meanwhile, there's an increasing interest in using online tools to manage small meetings of 25 people or less, says Norm Rose, PhoCusWright senior corporate and technology analyst. Of the corporate meetings expected to book this year, at least 60% of the travel portion will be done online, he says.

StarCite, based in Philadelphia, has become the main choice for a comprehensive technology tool to plan meetings from beginning to end, in part because it has merged with or acquired several top competitors over the past several years. There are also niche tools in high demand, since some companies don't need a comprehensive solution. Passkey International Inc., Quincy, Mass., for example, is focused on assisting with group hotel reservations. Certain Software Inc., San Francisco, helps manage online attendee registration and management. ConventionPlanit.com of North Potomac, Md., provides an online directory of resources for meetings professionals. Some of the consumer-focused travel Web sites are also in the space, such as Expedia Inc., Bellevue, Wash., which offers meeting-planning capabilities for leisure and corporate travelers. Some newer entrants such as Groople Inc., Englewood, Colo., and Group Travel Planet LLC, Sevierville, Tenn., have largely targeted smaller, unmanaged, leisure group travel.

Kevin Johnston, CEO of Advantage Event Group, an Atlanta-based event planner, uses Passkey to help his clients manage their hotel needs. The biggest risk clients have is not keeping abreast of the real number of rooms they need; bad estimates, cancellations and no-shows can cause a planner to wind up on the hook for a contract to pay for many more rooms than were needed, says Mr. Johnston, who has seen companies pay hotels as much as $40,000 in penalties. Passkey helps the clients track bookings and cancellations in real time and keeps a history of how many people tend to register for a recurring event, and at what pace. The technology also helps hotels gauge whether a client's block of reserved rooms is excessive, and enables a link between a person's hotel reservation and conference reservation, so if someone registers for the conference but hasn't booked a room that will be transparent, Mr. Johnston says.

Hotels pay a licensing fee to Passkey for use of the technology and often let clients use Passkey at no charge.

 
StarCite, for its part, offers a variety of meeting-management services—from gathering hotel bids to sending electronic invitations and tracking registrations online. Once registered, the attendees can seamlessly use StarCite to book airline tickets and hotels online if the company planning the meeting has integrated its corporate-travel booking tool with StarCite. VIPs can receive discreet invitations to private receptions. Companies can route attendees' flight arrival times to ground transportation providers. And when the meeting is over, attendees can offer feedback online.

Planners can also use StarCite to view an online calendar that displays the status of all planned meetings, along with color-coded designations for each department. Companies say the best use of the calendar is its ability to display accumulated hotel reservations that were canceled earlier but can still be used to avoid paying big cancellation fees.

Cutting Losses

SAIC's Ms. Mikeman began using a meeting-planning technology five years ago from SeeUthere, a company that managed attendee registration and later became part of StarCite through a merger. She and her colleague Glenn Burgess wanted better controls after incurring big fees for canceled rooms and food.

Within four years, SAIC reduced those kinds of inventory "damages" by 99%, and gained additional efficiencies with the technology's tools for collecting data and managing hotel bids; while it used to take two hours to survey five different properties, now that can be completed in 30 minutes.

The American Cancer Society began using b-there.com in 2001 to help with online registrations, says Terri Clay, a senior director at the organization.

B-there.com was eventually absorbed by StarCite, which now helps the Cancer Society plan meetings for as many as 10,000 people. For one huge lobbying event in Washington, D.C., the society used StarCite to collect and review thousands of application essays from the would-be grass-roots advocates for cancer-related legislation. The technology also helped pair roommates for the event, asking questions about bedtime preferences and gender.

Room to Improve

Users have some gripes about StarCite. The request-for-proposal process, for example, in which suppliers are invited to bid for contracts, could be faster and more streamlined; there could be more customizing; and it could be easier to use for novices. One customer says the technology sometimes gets upgraded without notification, which can cause unwelcome surprises. Another issue: glitches that arise from occasional merger-integration issues.

StarCite says it has grown quickly and is working with customers to continually improve. The company says it is working to speed hotel response times to company RFPs, for example, and is redesigning aspects of its product to make it more intuitive and easy to use.

The company says that it's working to improve notification about upgrades, and that it's committed to managing systems integrations "with as much sensitivity as possible" to customer data and experiences.

Set-up also can be time-consuming as companies customize the tools to suit their own needs. Most companies add functions gradually since testing and internal approvals can take months to complete. For that reason, some companies say they're not yet using all of the capabilities for which they're paying. Some companies haven't integrated their online travel tool with StarCite's technology, for example.

Despite the challenges, the technologies still provide relief. "I'm from the generation that started doing this on a typewriter," says Ms. Clay.

—Ms. Trottman is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Dallas bureau

Company officials are monitoring revenue, profits and their product diversity, among other variables, with an IPO at the midpoint of next year in mind, CEO Robert Farrell said. Metastorm would be the first local software firm to go public since Columbia-based Sourcefire earlier this year and Baltimore-based Visicu in 2006 -- at a time when tech companies have been leading the IPO charge on Wall Street.

Metastorm scored a $30 million round of venture capital funding led by Baltimore-based ABS Capital Partners in August and used most of it to buy Proforma Corp., a Southfield, Mich.-based firm, Farrell said. The acquisition added the ability for clients to simulate the results of changes in business processes, complementing products Metastorm already had that focus on management and organization of processes.

Metastorm client Blockbuster Inc., for example, uses the software to monitor and organize its supply of movies at all of its stores. The London Underground uses it to organize and track incidents of broken-down trains, passenger injuries and other important situations. And Great Clips hair salons use it to organize openings of new franchise locations.

The software niche is known in the industry as business process management, or BPM.

The company's major software lines are being organized into a new platform, Metastorm Enterprise. As Metastorm has been updating its product line, it has been considering an IPO for about a year, Farrell said. Executives view that route as the best way to grow through future acquisitions to compete with other firms specializing in their segment of the software industry as well as giants like IBM and Oracle.

Michael Zisman, a member of Metastorm's board of directors, said he thinks an IPO is appropriate for a company like Metastorm because it enables it to grow market share through more acquisitions. Software companies are consolidating as the industry matures, Zisman added, and Metastorm aims to establish a long-standing presence. Zisman is also managing director at Wayne, Pa.-based Internet Capital Group, a Metastorm investor.

Metastorm executives will continue to work to ensure the predictability of the firm's profit margin before opening its books to Wall Street, Zisman said. The company has been profitable for 13 quarters, Farrell said. In August he said Metastorm's revenue tops $70 million a year.

Doug Schmidt, CEO of Bethesda investment bank Chessiecap Inc., said he thinks significant growth and bulk as a company are required for a successful software company IPO in today's market. Benchmarks such as $30 million to $40 million in sales, strong profitability and a $100 million market capitalization are minimums to get people interested in software firms going public, he said. Rating :
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  Re: When we will see the S1-Filing of Metastorm     10-Apr-08 02:00 pm     Remember additional at this news and the numbers: 100 million revenues in 2008 an ipo in midpoint of 2008.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Metastorm expands software line with another acquisitionBaltimore Business Journal - by Scott Dance Staff

Metastorm Inc. has acquired New York software firm Spotlight Data for an undisclosed price in a cash deal, its second such acquisition in the past month and third since August.

The acquisition gives Metastorm further capabilities in its software line, known as business process management. The products help businesses and government organizations streamline implementation of large-scale, complicated processes and operations, and Spotlight Data brings a better ability to model and analyze simulations of processes being tested, Metastorm CEO Robert Farrell said.

The company plans to release Spotlight Data's capabilities as a product called Metastorm Process Discovery, Farrell said.

The acquisition plays into Metastorm's strategy of supplementing its growth with acquisitions, Farrell said. It has an IPO at the midpoint of 2008 in mind. The company's revenue is moving toward $100 million a year -- a rate the company aims to reach by the end of 2008, Farrell said.

Metastorm now employs about 300 people, with 60 in its Baltimore headquarters. The company has plans to move Spotlight's employees and resources and build a larger New York office to allow for more of a customer experience with product demonstrations, Farrell said.

The company acquired European firm Process Competence in November to build its footprint overseas, and it bought Michigan company Proforma Corp. in August to expand its product line. Before that, the company received a $30 million round of venture capital led by Baltimore-based ABS Capital Partners in August. Rating :
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  Re: When we will see the S1-Filing of Metastorm     2 second(s) ago     Most important from the last posting:

"The acquisition plays into Metastorm's strategy of supplementing its growth with acquisitions, Farrell said. It has an IPO at the midpoint of 2008 in mind. The company's revenue is moving toward $100 million a year -- a rate the company aims to reach by the end of 2008, Farrell said." Rating :
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“We have experienced phenomenal growth with the introduction of the CI Ad Network and a host of new products for online marketers as the e-commerce landscape continues to evolve and opportunities emerge,” said CI President and CEO Rob Wight. “I’m pleased to welcome Charles to our team, and I look forward to the leadership talent he will contribute in this critical role as CI continues to expand its Web-initiated commerce and marketing technology services for manufacturers, retailers and publishers.”

Charles is an accomplished leader with over 10 years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and international management. Prior to joining CI, he led Amazon’s pan-European online and affiliate marketing program, accelerating growth while improving spend efficiency. He lead Amazon’s Japanese affiliate marketing program on an interim basis, reorganizing the team and accelerating growth, and he also guided financial analysis and planning for Amazon's multi-million dollar search engine marketing program. Prior to his work at Amazon, Charles developed market entry strategy for a principal life insurance company as Senior Manager at Inforte Corporation and led strategic online initiatives for Cerner Corporation and AT&T Solutions. Charles holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

CI has also seen growing momentum in its SellCore™ Publisher Solutions with the adoption of its services by several well-known publishers seeking to launch or expand their shopping site. In his new role at CI, Charles will also be overseeing SellCore™ services to help publishers decrease their time to market and enhance product data for affiliate networks, search portals, comparison shopping engines, niche shopping sites and online marketplaces.

About Channel Intelligence, Inc. (CI)
With product data as the core foundation of its marketing services, CI has created a database capable of storing, managing and optimizing hundreds of millions of products every day. Helping consumers easily find and buy products is CI’s primary goal. CI is able to accomplish this through innovative suites of services for manufacturers, retailers and publishers. CI works with some of the best solution providers in the industry and supports over 50 destination sites to benefit its customers which include hundreds of the world’s leading manufacturers and retailers such as Best Buy, JVC, Neiman Marcus Group, Panasonic, Spiegel, Circuit City, Target, Philips, ICE.com, Black & Decker, ShopNBC, Yamaha, Overstock.com and more.

Founded in 1999 by CEO Robert Wight and EVP Alan Fulmer, CI is a partner company of Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE).  

Zu den Weltuntergangspropheten zählten diesmal die größten Schreihälse, die Investmentbängster. Aber gerade das Reduzieren, Rasieren und Dezimieren dieses zum größen Teil unnützen für den Wohlstand der Menschheit unnüzten Packs ist der Schlüssel zum Aufstieg der Wirtschaft weltweit und der Aktienkurse. Denn nun können sich die Menschen wieder auf die wesentlichen Dinge konzentrieren: auf ein Mehr an Güter und nützlichen Dienstleistungen, nicht auf auf Schmarotzer- und Abkochaktionen des Investmentbängsterabschaums, der für die Menschheit tausendmal schädlicher ist und war als RAF und Al Kaida zusammen, denn diese kriminelllen Investmentgängster-Banden sind viel gefährlicher, auch wenn sie nur in Schlips und Kragen herumlaufen, Edelpuffs bevölkern und Maserati fahren - die bestechen nämlich Regierungen und das ist sehr viel gefährlicher als wenn man gegen sie kämpft.

For interest rate derivatives, including interest rate swaps and options and cross-currency interest rate swaps, the notional amount outstanding rose almost 10 percent, to $382.3 trillion in the second half of 2007 from $347.1 trillion at mid-year. That number was at $285.7 trillion at the end of 2006. Notional amounts of equity derivatives--equity swaps, options and forwards--reached $10 trillion at year-end 2007, up 39 percent over 2006’s $7.2 trillion, but were flat during the latter half of the year.

ISDA emphasized that the amounts do not represent the risks associated with the increase in activity but, citing data from the Bank for International Settlements, it said that gross mark-to-market value was about 2.2 percent of the notional amount outstanding. In addition, net credit exposure--after netting but before collateral--was 0.5 percent of the notional amount. Applying those percentages to ISDA’s total notional amount outstanding of $454.5 trillion as of Dec. 31, gross credit exposure before netting was $9.8 trillion and credit exposure after netting $2.3 trillion.

In a separate announcement, ISDA said that the preliminary results of its margin survey showed that the amount of collateral in circulation to support the growing volume of OTC activity grew to $2.1 trillion last year, up from $1.3 trillion. The use of cash continued to increase and now represents more than 78 percent of collateral received and 83 percent of collateral delivered.

The margin survey, which includes responses from 107 firms, also found that collateral coverage continues to grow, in terms of both trade volume subject to collateral agreements and credit exposure covered by collateral. Sixty-three percent of OTC derivatives trades are now subject to collateral agreements, compared with 59 percent in 2006. And 65 percent of credit exposure for OTC derivatives contracts is now covered by collateral, up from 59 percent last year.

“ISDA’s 2008 margin survey reflects continued importance of collateralization as a risk mitigation tool and the effectiveness of collateral agreements,” said Robert Pickel, executive director and chief executive officer of ISDA.

Despite significant growth in volumes for most OTC derivative products, post-trade processing has for the most part improved, according to the ISDA operations benchmarking survey. However, there were differing levels of effectiveness, largely reflective of where the market has put its efforts. In 2005, global regulators flagged CDS confirmation backlogs as a systematic risk and major dealers have since taken steps to streamline their back-office procedures, including the use of an array of electronic confirmation and affirmation platforms such as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s (DTCC) Deriv-Serv.

ISDA said that credit derivatives saw the highest level of automation in confirmation matching--62 percent across all respondents--while the lowest was for equity derivatives, at 23 percent. The backlog of outstanding confirmations was 6.6 business days for credit derivatives, followed by 9.9 for interest rate products and 13.3 for equity derivatives. Ninety percent of electronic confirmations for interest rate and credit derivatives were typically sent within a day of the trade date (T+1) while for equity derivatives it was T+4.

“ISDA’s efforts to standardize documentation further, together with the industry’s commitments to onboard clients to automated platforms, should lead to a drop in these figures over the coming year,” Pickel predicted.

ISDA also announced that Eraj Shirvani has been appointed chairman, succeeding Jonathan Moulds, Bank of America’s president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who had been chair of the trade group since 2004 and on the board since 1998. Shirvani, who joined the ISDA board in 2004, is managing director and head of European credit and European and Asia-Pacific credit sales and trading at Credit Suisse. He is also a member of Credit Suisse’s global derivatives committee and serves on the boards of the Clearing Corp. and DTCC’s Deriv-Serv.

Amounts about selling of Creditex too low in the following ariticle     19-Apr-08 06:39 am     www.financialnews-us.com/?page=us...


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  Re: Amounts about selling of Creditex too low in the following ariticle     19-Apr-08 06:44 am     Part of the article in my last posting is the following:

"Icap does not have comparable rivals but within its different businesses it has plenty of competition. Where Icap goes, they usually follow. First, there is talk about Creditex, an interdealer credit-trading platform. Observers said the company was on the brink of being sold for between $700m and $800m; the contenders include the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Intercontinental Exchange.

A takeover would make sense for all. The CME is trying to make forays into the OTC markets, and credit derivatives in particular. ICE, an energy exchange, has been trying to expand into financial markets. It failed to win bids for electronic trading system EBS and the Chicago Board of Trade, so chief executive Jeffrey Sprecher, who is close to Creditex’s equivalent Sunil Hirani – would doubtless like to clinch a deal.

It makes sense for Creditex’s owners to sell while volume growth for credit derivatives is strong; many expect it to taper off in the coming year. It also makes sense for users, as there has never been greater interest in bringing the instruments into a more transparent, regulated environment." Rating :
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  Re: Amounts about selling of Creditex too low in the following ariticle     55 minutes ago     I don't believe, that anyone can buy Creditex-Group for only 700-800 million, because the revenues in 2008 will be about 250 million and the company is high profitable. Remember the last take-over, where 10-fold of revenues and a lot more were paid.

Additional we must recognize, that Creditex Group is the owner of the subsidiary Tzero, the leading post-trade-company in the market of credit-derivatives.

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“Procurement outsourcing is redefining itself with the emergence of a ‘phased’ sourcing approach that benefits both buyers and suppliers,” said Katrina Menzigian, Vice President, Everest Research Institute. “This phase-in approach is allowing the opportunity for testing of synergies, scaling up operations, developing industry-specific capability which, in turn, delivers better results and savings. Buyers are also able to ‘experiment’ with procurement outsourcing as they potentially migrate towards a full Source-to-Pay (S2P) strategy.”

New "Value Proposition"

The study also identifies strong movement towards global sourcing and offshoring, thereby providing buyers with new levers for addressing issues that are related to operational costs, technology management costs, and enhanced analytics, among other factors. The newly emerging PO value proposition also represents the convergence of the traditional PO value proposition around sourcing efficiencies with the traditional Finance & Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) value proposition centered upon operational effectiveness.

Additional Research Highlights

Increasing leverage of technology in PO solutions is driving more standardization, vertical best industry practices and tighter compliance protocols.

Pricing structures are stabilizing towards a combination of managed service fee and gain-sharing contracts.
Manufacturing continues to be the dominant adopter of PO; however, demand in financial services and consumer products sectors has risen.

The top five suppliers are Accenture, IBM, Ariba, ICG Commerce, and Xchanging.


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  Re: Very important study about the market of ICGCommerce from Everest Research     19-Apr-08 01:27 pm     Continue of the last posting:

The top five suppliers are Accenture, IBM, Ariba, ICG Commerce, and Xchanging.

While the top five PO suppliers continue to command 75 percent of market share, PO “specialists” (such as buyingTeam, DSSI and Provade) and offshore-centric suppliers (such as Genpact, HCL, Infosys BPO and Wipro) have captured a growing number of new contracts over the past two years.

Few suppliers today have end-to-end S2P service capabilities, but they are making concerted efforts to acquire capability through acquisitions partnerships and internal enhancements.


“New market segments are emerging, and global sourcing for PO is gaining traction, which is creating medium-term market differentiation for suppliers capable of delivering the services,” said Saurabh Gupta, Research Director, Everest Research Institute and co-author of the report. “PO suppliers with existing capabilities in finance and accounting and offshoring are well positioned to service present buyer requirements. With the influx of new suppliers, buyers need to carefully assess their organizational readiness to take on this very complex undertaking as well as assess suppliers’ service delivery capabilities, procurement expertise and performance records.”

About the whitepaper and study

Whitepaper: The Everest Research Institute redefined multi-process procurement outsourcing to enhance its ability to track emerging PO market trends. The new definition acknowledges the rise in phased-in approach contracts, an increased focus on the operational components of procurement and an expanding supplier landscape. Complimentary whitepaper: "Procurement Outsourcing (PO) Market Definition Update - Tracking the Next Phase of the PO Market Evolution" Registration required.

Study: The Everest Research Institute report, "Procurement Outsourcing (PO) Annual Report 2008" (ID: ERI-2008-1-R-0234), analyzes the PO market from multiple dimensions, including by market size, buyer adoption, transaction characteristics, supplier landscape, and value proposition. This report will assist both companies considering outsourcing procurement to a third-party and suppliers of PO services to understand in detail how the market dynamics and value proposition for PO are evolving. Does not include shared services or captives.

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  Re: Very important study about the market of ICGCommerce from Everest Research     19-Apr-08 01:29 pm     Most important message:

"The top five suppliers are Accenture, IBM, Ariba, ICG Commerce, and Xchanging."

That means in the result: Internet Capital owns 65% one of the top five: 65% of ICGCommerce.